Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Um, what?

George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 2005
  • "In this job you've got a lot on your plate on a regular basis; you don't have much time to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?'"

High School is different than Jr. High. First of all, you don't get to teach Psychology in Jr. High, so I'd never have been discussing adolescence, puberty, hormones and other such fun things in the first place. But I've also decided that they are sophisticated enough to find more appropriate ways of being inappropriate.
Chapter 11, Adolescence. We're discussing maturing and the effects of early and late maturing on boys and girls. (Girls don't like maturing early, boys don't like maturing late). A 9th grade boy raises his hand and says he read a report that said that teenage boys do check out other boys' "packages" in the locker room, I'm assuming to confirm that they are concerned about where they fit in the maturity spectrum. I didn't get the chance to make that point because an 11th grade boy blurts out "I just check out my own package." Now I won't argue that it may not have been the best response, but I literally had to leave the room I was laughing so hard. The history teacher came by and saw me with my head to the wall, laughing my guts out and, of course, had to ask what was so funny. So I told her, and turns out I'm not the only one that found it amusing. I think that the reason I found it so funny, despite being inappropriate, was that it was completely unexpected and yet still tied into the class discussion. He was paying attention to what we were talking about at least..........

2 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

C'mon, Max, you've been out of junior high too long if you think that comment was "inappropriate." geez.
Funny, yes, but "inappropriate" from a teenager? No way.
I nailed a kid today with a good one. Austin was messing around when I needed the class's attention, and Emma said, "He's scary" to me. Without missing a beat, I said, "Well, looks aren't everything." THAT got him to pay attention.
Not as funny as yours. But it worked.

Max Sartin said...

Yeah, well there's 'inappropriate' as in something that most students would say was wrong, and 'inappropriate' as in not unusual for a teenager, but as a teacher you still have to say it's inappropriate. This comment definitly falls into the latter category.
And by the way - good response. I like students that you can kid aorund with like that and they don't take it too seriously.